Rosalia Rambles

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  • Redundancy Review: Day 477, “Flying ahead”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

    Good morning multiroles and jammers, welcome to Day 477 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    I am writing earlier today at least, it being 9:06pm in the UK currently as I set out to write today, but the situation is still much the same as yesterday, though with less hours played today than yesterday – which is entirely down to one mission being the spawn of Satan itself taking me almost a solid two hours worth of attempts. This included trialling out different strategies, doing a downright precarious search on Youtube to see if I was missing any tricks, sorting out dinner entirely to calm my nerves, beating the boss enemies only to have discovered I glitched the game cause I killed it at the checkpoint mark, and finally, finishing the mission.

    After that utter slog fest, I played for a couple more missions which involved me reaching some insane twists in the story before stopping for the night, and whilst every part of me is screaming at me to play more, I know I should do some writing work for the day so as to not be completely unproductive during this period.

    It will mainly be a ramble about looking ahead to the future today, not sure how long it will be, but it ties into the “review” segment of the day nicely.

    The nights are getting darker, which comes as a double-edged sword for myself because I love the fact it gets darker earlier in winter even as the lack of sunlight plays havoc with my Seasonal Affective Disorder, and whilst it does not really apply this year, I do hold an appreciation for the slow down on activities as the year draws closer to an end.

    Things will not really slow down for me though, as I will still be shooting off applications even as hiring teams go on Christmas parties and breaks. The end of the year can be a gamble on what will be posted, either stopping completely as no one wants to hire in the November/December months, or scrambling for new staff as budget needs to be spent before a certain point. I will keep myself as optimistic as can be, but I know there will likely be difficulties ahead.

    I still hold out hope for a better future though, and whilst I remain actively aware of a time limit on my current savings, I know that keeping myself on the right path will yield fruit.

    And I do this all because even in my darkest moments, when the way ahead looks bleak, I try to think about the future I will have with my partner, and all the things we still want to experience. Be it video games, in-person events, or simply being able to continue spending time together, I want to have a future with him no matter what.

    I… ran out of steam much faster than I anticipated for this one, but I think I have said what I wanted to say in a concise manner for once, so, I am going to move on to the Warhammer Wednesday review segment, which because I still have not had the drive to do anything with my models yet, will be talking once more about Space Marine 2, my main way of engaging with the medium as a whole.

    Specifically, their roadmap for their third year of free content drops and paid cosmetic DLC.

    In an age where meaningful new content is gated behind paywalls, it is appreciated seeing Saber Interaction (for all their faults) put effort into making Space Marine 2 a fleshed-out product that has kept me surprisingly engaged, especially now that I have a regular full group of people to play with.

    Coming tomorrow is a patch adding in a twist on the regular siege mode, instead focusing on playing Chaos Space Marines against Tyranids and the forces of the Imperium. I am a little annoyed that the cosmetics for this mode continue to be locked behind progression in the PvP area of the game, though that is more of a personal gripe than anything else because I really do not want to commit the time into getting good at PvP when I have so much else to play and do.

    There is also the “Crucible System”, which to quote the Community Update itself:

    “Challenge yourself with the new Crucible mode to earn Crucible XP and unlock the Lamenters armour set. Talk to the Chapter Chaplain in the Battle Barge to pick your Penances. Penances are personal debuffs that are designed to offer a tougher challenge to end game players.”

    Admittedly, this is not really something that interests me. My group has not even managed to reliably tackle missions on the higher end of difficulty, with one mission in particular being a struggle even on lower difficulties, so adding in even more challenge is probably not the direction we will be going. That said, having more options for end-game players to challenge themselves is always something I will celebrate being included – even if I am not really fond of them myself.

    We also have the rework of the Tactical Marine class, alongside a bevy of reworks coming throughout the next year to other classes and systems in the game… none of which affect my preferred class of Assault Marine, meaning I am perfect in every way and can continue to be death from above with a variety of pistols and axes.

    The main headline from the upcoming roadmap is the addition of the Apothecary class, traditionally a more medically inclined marine that will wield the signature weapon of the “Absolver Bolt Pistol”, presumably alongside the “Narthecium” for healing, buffs, and anything else the class may entail. This was quite a surprise, as a lot of the mutterings in the community at large were anticipating this class to be the Judiciar instead, being the precursor to a Chaplain in the updated lore. I will not complain about extra support options though.

    In terms of the cosmetic DLC packs, whilst the Space Wolves Champion Pack for the Bulwark class looks interesting as someone who absolutely loves the aesthetic of the Wolves, not much is catching my eye to actually invest my limited funds into the next season pass. I know I saw a fair bit of chatter about the Crimson Fists actually getting represented in game, albeit after several successor chapters had the spotlight before them.

    Y’know it is kind of weird in hindsight to talk about the roadmap and have most of my thoughts be “this is nice but a lot of it is not really for me”, though I guess my appreciation is still in having this much new content being available freely. New missions, classes, and equipment that can be bought with earnable in-game currency shows how serious the studio is taking this, and with Space Marine 3 still being another two or three years away, I doubt they will drop support for a while yet.

    My group and I will continue to play all the same, as the loop of the Operations and Siege modes scratch an itch inside my brain that craves violence in the form of heavily armoured super soldiers…

    …that and it is really easy to cop out on Warhammer Wednesday content by writing about the game, though I really should return to my models soon, especially if the job search does not yield fruit soon.

    My brain really has been broken by playing so much Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve (the bit of spelling out the game title will continue until I get my review out there), which has put a damper on my writing work. Still, I appreciate you reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are able to engage in your own hobbies, whatever they may be. The state of the world right now makes it hard for people to find the time or the funds, but I sincerely wish you are able to find either for whatever makes you happy.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 473-475, “Back on the prowl”

    Redundancy Review: Day 473-475, “Back on the prowl”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

    Good morning drones and workers, welcome to Day 473 to 475 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    First off, thank you to everyone for making my Vexpo recap my highest viewed piece this year, 15 views is absolutely insane numbers, so if any of you have stuck around, thank you for believing in this weird writer trying to make sense of the world.

    After writing twelve-thousand words over the course of a week, I decided I was going to take the weekend off and try my best to relax… though that did include doing job applications on Saturday morning just to get myself back into the groove. Admittedly harder than I would have liked to admit, but my brain is still stuck in “party mode” to some extent.

    Either that or my dopamine receptors are still completely burnt out from the Vexpo weekend alongside my higher mental faculties recovering from both the weekend and writing about the weekend that the prospect of doing anything that is not mindless or on auto-pilot is extremely daunting.

    But I said to myself that I wanted to be better in the wake of Vexpo, and that means continuing to be on the hunt for a job, whatever form that may take. I will admit there was a little bit of a negative feeling on the Wednesday just gone, as I was lying in bed after having pushed myself to write more and more I confided in my partner:

    “In any normal scenario, tomorrow would be the day I go back to work, and it feels weird to not have that still.”

    The routine of a normal job is definitely the thing I miss the most out of my current situation. Obviously I try to create my own routine during the day with job hunting and the Redundancy Review, but there is no denying that paid work helps to create an actual impetus to get out of bed each morning which systems of my own design are not as effective at doing. It keeps me moving though, and more importantly it keeps my mind active, because otherwise I very much feel as if my brain would decay into nothing if I were not doing intellectually stimulating activities each day.

    Although, this week the balance will be a precarious one, as I have Ace Combat 8 (and by extension, Ace Combat Zero Remastered) imminently on my horizon as preloading begins today with advanced access coming later this evening for me because of the Deluxe Edition. It is extremely rare I will buy a Deluxe, Special, or whatever they want to call it edition of a game, but I make an exception for Ace Combat as it is a franchise that holds a special place in my heart, and considering the long dev cycle this game underwent, I want to show my support to the developers.

    Am I going to regret staying up to play a video game in what is possibly the most unemployed behaviour I am going to exhibit? Almost certainly, but part of me wants to enjoy this period while it lasts, however hard it might be.

    There is not much I want to review today, so have these photos of ducks I took on a shopping walk to get some fresh underwear and socks pre-Vexpo.

    That will do it all for today, I want to try stay on track this week to keep myself in the groove after dropping the ball last week, but I will make no promises. Regardless, thank you for reading this edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope the Monday feelings have not brought you down too hard.

    You deserve an easy time.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 457, “The common topic of sleep”

    Redundancy Review: Day 457, “The common topic of sleep”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

    Good morning insomniacs and narcoleptics, welcome to Day 457 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    I am rapidly running out of words relating to sleep to open things up with, which is not surprising considering I have written around ten reviews where the topic of sleep, either too much or too little, is brought up as the main body of the article that day.

    Today is in the latter category of “too little”, as I was up till around two in the morning stuck in a thinking pattern, alternating between having my brain slow down in the hopes of finally giving me the blessed sleep I crave before suddenly thrusting anxiety into the forefront of my mind once more giving me about ten minutes of feeling on edge with rapid thoughts running through my mind before it calms down again.

    Usually in those moments would be the moment I reach for a CBD gummy to help quiet the mind and allowing myself to sleep, but I have been holding back from taking them recently for a handful of reasons:

    • I am halfway down my last jar and really do not have the funds to restock myself at this current moment in time
    • I had a bad experience with one a couple weeks back and have been hesitant ever since
    • And I want my system able to receive the blessed relaxation as best as possible for Vexpo sleep next week because I will certainly need it

    Thankfully the day is not too stacked for me, though I do have some more job applications at the local council I need to work on before my time away. Local government has been the main focus of my applications since being laid off three months ago, primarily in pursuit of acquiring better benefits – especially a more robust pension benefit because whilst I do not fully believe I will be able to retire for one reason or another, it would be nice to actually care about my future rather than be dismissive.

    I definitely have some amount of savings in my pension, although it is simultaneously nowhere near what the guidance says it should be for my age and also looking damn fine if I start to run low on funds if this job search gets more protracted than I would like it to be.

    Plus there is the fact that writers never usually fully retire from work, as our bodies fail keeping our minds sharp is more important than ever, meaning we will be working on our own things even long past the age of any physically or mentally demanding work, though it would still be nice to fund being an aging writer considering that making a living off writing is still as hard as ever.

    Admittedly it has been nice to start writing again, even though I know for a fact Vexpo is going to completely derail any notion of a schedule as I will be out of action from the 17th to at least the 22nd due to how much I have in my itinerary and that I will be writing the sequel last year’s Vexpo post as quickly as I can once my energy returns to me.

    For now though, it has been nice to get back in the groove, and remind myself of why I enjoy writing so much. It came back naturally to me, and even on today when I feel as if I am struggling to write, it feels good to get my thoughts down and make everything feel less heavy if only for a wonderful, fleeting moment before my reality kicks me back down.

    I love writing. There is nothing that would make me happier than getting to do this every day, and who knows? Maybe I will make it there someday.

    Until that point, I will keep rambling about all the things that make me happy, which today includes showing off one of my proudest gaming achievements to date: my collection of endemic life in Monster Hunter World.

    Due to a friend wanting to go through World on their PS5 and myself having a PS4 Pro with a physical copy of the game, we have arranged a regular game night to play through things together. Even as the franchise marches on towards Ascendance, I think there is great value to be found in the fifth generation entries of World plus Iceborne and Rise plus Sunbreak, especially on sale for stupidly low prices given how much content is packed into each game.

    Returning to World felt satisfying as all hell, and whilst there are several gameplay decisions I find myself questioning both on their own and when comparing it to the quality-of-life packed Wilds, I still consider it a nine-out-of-ten experience that any newer Monster Hunter fans should experience at least once.

    Not least because the endemic life collection system and the way you are able to display said endemic life might be one of my favourite side activities in the entire franchise.

    Once you progress into Master Rank in the Iceborne expansion and unlock the new hub area of Seliana, you also unlock a personal room area that can be decorated with ludicrous amounts of microtransaction DLCs to make it fit your taste, but more importantly it features several areas to place any captured endemic life, including both a fish pond and an aquarium.

    Particular creatures of note in my aquarium include two Petricanths, extremely rare endemic life styled after ancient coelacanths, and the Sealord’s Crestfish, an even rarer endemic life that took me so many soft resets during expeditions to find but was one of my proudest achievements once I did… oh how little did I know how hard some of the others were going to be.

    When you enter the room from the main hub area, you start on this upper balcony area that can contain endemic life both on the bannister itself and on the floor. My floor is filled with Moonlight Geckos, not particularly rare creatures compared to what else you can see in the room, but still pretty hard to find. The guest on my bannister is the far more interesting exhibit though, a gorgeous bird called the Blue Diva, an endemic life I did not even search out for and found purely by chance when on a hunt one day. Whilst I would love to find more to fill out the bannister, I think there are more pressing matters for me rather than grinding it out for multiple rare creatures.

    Especially when you take into account I have six out of seven Molys from the endgame Guiding Lands area – or as I prefer to call it, the Grinding Lands because this area is so shittily designed in terms of how you have to progress each zone for mining, monsters, and the rare endemic life of Molys and there is very little that can change my mind on this being the absolute worst way to build an endgame I have seen in any of the Monster Hunter titles I have played.

    Ahem.

    Still, the majority of the Molys is not bad at all.

    In front of my fireplace is a small family of Arrowhead Gecko, another rare creature but one with a guaranteed chance of dropping in one of the early Master Rank event quests, so I took the opportunity to grab a many as possible.

    One creature that took an absurd amount of grinding on my part is the Tsuchinoko. This illusive snake only spawns in Kulve Taroth raids near to the cannons or on the slide to area two, or in the little corridor before the optional quest of the final boss of Iceborne which is where I found it. A little fat bastard wiggling along my floor is a worthy addition to my collection.

    And finally, we come to the fish pond outside alongside the hot spring. The latter holds the singular Goldspring Macaque I have been able to find, and again whilst I would love to fill an entire spring of these, that sort of grinding is not in my cards. The former holds my pride and joy, but not for what is in the pond… although there is a second Sealord’s Crestfish in the pond as well which was so cool to find after grinding out the first one.

    Flying high above the fish pond is the Wintermoon Nettle, a rare creature that can only spawn at night in the Hoarfrost Reach locale and requires full on scaling the mountain in order to have a chance at capturing it. It may not even appear, and whilst it is possible to catch a glimpse of it from the ground I often found it quicker to run up the mountain to try find it, not wanting it to turn to day and have it despawn after taking the effort to get up there.

    This thing is massive, and floats around in the sky so elegantly. I remember when I first saw it after scaling the mountain for the god-knows-how-many’th time and knowing my quest to find the rarest forms of endemic life were at the end.

    World holds a special place in my heart for many of its mechanics, but currently no game in the franchise does creature collecting better than this one.

    Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are sleeping well. Losing sleep is never fun, and I hope to sleep better tonight myself.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 361-364, “Independent and Resilient”

    Redundancy Review: Day 361-364, “Independent and Resilient”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

    Good morning momos and roaches, welcome to Day 361 to 364 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Took time away from writing over the weekend, mainly cause I ended up being so damn sleepy after eating way too much both on the Friday and somehow the Saturday, leading to hermitting a fair bit outside of delivering some bread to a friend who was visiting town.

    But, considering tomorrow marks quite possibly the biggest milestone the Redundancy Review will hit – a year since starting – need to be back on track in order to hit that.

    It feels weird to consider that the most life-altering event that has happened to me is almost a year past now, having the company I gave three years to go under seemingly out of nowhere, leading me to navigate joblessness for the first time in four years, encompassing applying for redundancy payouts, going through nonsense at the Jobcentre (a place devoid of soul and emotion), and applying to all different sorts of roles across communications, admin, and my main area of expertise, quality assurance.

    Outside of the redundancy payments, the rest of the ventures did not have much success. I have talked previously how much I despise the UK benefits system, and this opinion has not changed over time, with me very much not looking forward to when I eventually have to go back into that system to play along with their demands to get a meagre amount of money to go towards bills and small morale boosts along the way.

    Though honestly, I am a long way off needing to play the Jobcentre game, both because I currently have too much saved for them to even consider helping me out, and with the way my final paycheck worked out I will not even be eligible to say I am out of paid work until July – which by that point, who knows what could have happened?

    What I wrote above comes off as fairly pessimistic, and well, being honest, I do feel rather pessimistic right now. In addition to sleepiness over the weekend, I ended up having a lot of negative feelings in relation to being unemployed, even going so far as to cry heavily into my pillow some nights because the loss of my professional identity ended up hitting way too hard.

    I cannot recall how much I have used that phrase in previous reviews since losing my job again, but that is probably the most succinct way of describing how I feel.

    The way I was conducting myself professionally was not really healthy for me. I was burning out hard, losing passion for the work I did, and coping through seriously unhealthy ways – but at the same time, to not have that in my life anymore leaves me extremely listless in a way that feels particularly oxymoronic. 

    It is painful.

    It is confusing.

    It makes me doubt my every move.

    And that is why I need to keep writing.

    Even when I do not feel like it.

    Even when the world feels painful.

    Even when what I have to say is negative and borderline vitriolic in some ways.

    Because I do not want to fade away… and if it were not for my writing, all of this would stay stuck inside me.

    I will make it through, no matter the pain, no matter the pessimism, no matter the cost. 

    It feels weird to try segue into a VTuesday segment after talking about such pessimism, but considering the individual I want to discuss today, I think it all fits.

    The title of this review is “Independent and Resilient”, which is the alignment of my independent VTuber kamioshi of Matara Kan, a beautiful giant roach woman whose perseverance has inspired me greatly.

    Formerly of the agency VShojo, which crashed and burned extremely hard just under a year ago, Matara has now been continuing to carve her own path as a fully independent VTuber. She was even a guest at Vexpo last year, taking part in both the opening concert and a Meet & Greet, both of which I had the absolute honour of attending.

    I mentioned it briefly in my Vexpo rundown, but it is worth re-emphasising that I got absolutely stunlocked by Matara as I went into the booth for my Meet & Greet with her. I had my questions in mind, I was ready to talk to her about different topics, I was a confident person who, whilst a little socially awkward, would be able to talk to a VTuber she absolutely loved.

    “Ooo, you’re stylish~”
    “Rosa? That’s a gorgeous name.”

    Ueigrhauairhgetiow4jrgutorhgier09ghonvjer09withugbnoq4rphjgb4508gh9ndsght0j

    Brain? Gone. Words? Fumbled. Feelings of flattery? Off the fucking charts.

    I still managed to ask my questions, but in part due to my brain going haywire and the convention noise spilling in a little bit, I do not think I fully processed what she was saying back to me.

    So I just ended up gushing.

    Loving her resilience. The ability to carry on in the face of hardship. I did not explicitly mention to her about losing my job, but I think I mentioned having my own hardships and being inspired by her carrying on.

    It was not even two minutes I got to spend chatting with her, as when it came time for the attendant to politely signal that I should wrap up whatever I was saying, I said my thank yous and asked for a photo with her.

    This is still a cherished memory.

    And I recently got around to finally framing the penplotter gift that came with that Meet & Greet, taking its spot in my, slowly forming, VTuber art and merch tessellation on the old fireplace wall in my flat.

    Independent and resilient… I will embody those words as best as I can going forward. Even when the days feel dark, I want to try hold myself strong in the face of uncertainty.

    I just hope this is not empty fluff I am using to hype myself up.

    Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are doing okay. Things feel tough right now, and if you are struggling against it all right now, I hope you find the strength to win your battles.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 323-325, “Sleep, and lots of it”

    Redundancy Review: Day 323-325, “Sleep, and lots of it”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

    Good morning nocturnals and diurnals, welcome to Day 323 to 325 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Yeah, no, the streak broke, but the streak resumption is still way shorter than what it was before. In short: periods suck. Emotional volatility and feeling drained by most things led to writing falling by the wayside in favour of recovery, but some positive things did happen in the interim.

    (end screen courtesy of my Gunlance friend, cause I was coming down so hard from the fight that I forgot to take a screenie)

    Me and my group of Monster Hunter friends finally came together to get me to beat Savage Omega. It took one initial attempt to dial things in after having not played so long, but the attempt after that went as smooth as anything, with no faints and being done in a smooth sub twenty minute time.

    It was one of the last things I needed to do to start considering my base game experience in Wilds to be “complete”, and I still love how Omega was implemented into the game from both the story and the gameplay perspective. 

    I should talk about Wilds more in future reviews, for all of its launch faults in terms of performance on PC, the experience I have had with it has been nothing short of phenomenal. In general I feel I should do more gaming-based reviews, or write more about games in general – try to inject some positivity into a space that can often be overwhelmed with negativity.

    In general, I follow the logic that I am not a critic, nor am I qualified to be one. I exercise my critical thinking skills and can approach stuff from a critical perspective, but my intention is to hopefully have the vast majority of the Redundancy Review be more about personal experience than critique.

    Outside of that I have been working hard on yet another Satisfactory engineering project, this time on a world my partner and I are playing together. I said early on that I wanted to handle the power generation for the world, and after some amount of trial and error I have been able to construct the first two floors of what I am referring to as “The Tower of Power”, something that will ideally be our central hub for power generation along with some smaller stations along the periphery of our world. It needs further refinement, but I am very happy with what I have been able to achieve in terms of engineering.

    But overall, what have I been doing the most?

    Resting.

    Sleeping in late.

    Enjoying my time with things.

    Indulging in the things I enjoy.

    Today I slept in till almost noon, and catching up on that amount of sleep feels fantastic. Given the nature of my work and life, I tended to run on a sleep deficit that often caught up with me very quickly in certain circumstances, leading to me constantly projecting the outwards appearance of being half asleep, alongside medicating myself heavily with various strengths of caffeine to have some measure of function throughout the day.

    It is still scary to consider the prospect that I am about to be unemployed once more, especially given that I want to use this as an opportunity to grow into something beyond what I currently am – even if I do not fully know where I am going next.

    For that though, I refer to an image that I have pinned in the DMs between myself and my partner on Discord. It is something that I am using as one of many guiding philosophies in how I am going forward in this strange new existence.

    I am going to pursue myself, both to recover from the pain and heartache that giving my all into a career has inflicted upon me, but also to grow into the person I want to become: a healthier, more put together version of myself.

    That will cover things for now, hopefully tomorrow brings about a more substantial Redundancy Review, especially as I am currently out and about with some tickets to go see a wildlife photographer give a talk, courtesy of my lovely parents.

    Thank you for reading this short catchup for this edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to take it easy this weekend. Indulge in your favourite food or drink if you can, you definitely deserve it after what came your way this week.

    No matter what you end up doing, I am proud of you. Never forget that.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 319, “Eepy”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

    Good morning baristas and bartenders, welcome to Day 319 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Being upfront, I am knackered right now.

    Saturday is normally a sleep-in day for me anyway, but things moved slowly up until I got the impetus to go shopping for the supplies needed for tomorrow night’s dinner and snacks for a film night with good company – said film night then taking up most of the time I could work on writing afterwards and now I am just lying here in bed typing out whatever my brain will allow me to.

    Which is not a lot, honestly.

    So uhh…

    Here is one of the megastructures I have built in Satisfactory. I refer to it as the “Basin Shell”, because it is built over the basin of a large waterfall and whenever I build a structure in Satisfactory over water I tend to append “Shell” onto it after the Big Shell in Metal Gear Solid 2.

    This was built as I severely needed to upgrade my power infrastructure going forward in order to accommodate the amount of structures I would need to construct and wanted to avoid brownouts or the fuse blowing wherever possible… there is a slight possibility I went overboard in this construction project as I was able to support a large factory in my home base and then build a massive shell project over another body of water, fully rig that up with power, and then nowhere near run out of power until I upgraded the grid yet again.

    Building megastructures is the thing I enjoy the most in Satisfactory. I know the overall goal is “the factory must grow”, and Part A needs to make Part B and Part C, but there’s a certain satisfaction (get it) in building a massive structure that only fills one purpose rather than having new components introduced to an already spaghetti-like machine.

    Maybe when I finally finish it, I will talk a bit about the other shell project and how it came together.

    In the meantime, that will do it for today. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you can rest as well as I am going to tonight.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 209, “Flipping Freezing”

    Redundancy Review: Day 209, “Flipping Freezing”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

    Good morning hyperboreans and cryomancers, welcome to Day 209 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    As per the title, it is flipping freezing, one might even say fucking freezing… one is me, I think it is fucking freezing, I just do not like to put swears directly in the titles of articles.

    Swearing within the body? Will do so to my heart’s content, but profane titles are off limits.

    I guess I can use today to talk about my relationship with swearing. If you read enough Redundancy Reviews or know me in-person you know I am no stranger to flowery language, dropping “fuck” in every second sentence and having a love of a good “shit”, but where did my sailor mouth come from?

    In a few short points:

    • Family
    • Work
    • ADHD

    The first one is pretty obvious, whilst they started off pretty well with not swearing in front of myself or my brother, things eventually turned to infrequent swearing in front of us yet at the same time not wanting us to swear, before all pretense was dropped and swearing once more became a common feature in our household. 

    This alone was not enough though to get me to the level of swearing I am today, which is where work comes in, specifically, my old platform lead when I worked at Codemasters who went by the name of “Rye”. Was a lovely guy, really helped me out in the early days of me working there and was generally understanding when I messed things up or needed additional guidance.

    Being from Coventry however, he was someone who dropped swears like they were treat-size chocolate bars on Halloween, and considering after a period of time I was working with him quite closely due to the Live Ops team being a smaller group, it was only a matter of time until I picked up his habit of profane language.

    That said, he was not entirely responsible for me picking up that habit, and if anything, the line of work we both found ourselves in almost necessitated swearing as a coping mechanism for dealing with the deluge of shit we encountered on a near-daily basis. It was a running joke in our Teams chat that if it were not for the security locks holding our devkit consoles to our desks, they would have been thrown out the window long ago.

    Quality Assurance is a field of expertise that requires a steady mind to stay focused on getting a bug replicated or an issue to occur on a long playthrough – cussing out whatever you are testing is a good way of stopping your brain from shutting off during the necessary repetition that this brings, which is where the final point of ADHD comes in.

    It might seem confusing for me to correlate neurodivergence with swearing, but bear with me for a bit. My area of specialisation is within the Extended Reality (XR) industry as a QA tester, this often means I have a moderately heavy lump of circuitry and screens strapped to me head with a non-breathable cushion of foam pressed right against my face, leaving only a small gap where my nose is for moist air to escape.

    Given that sometimes the experiences I am required to test will last me up to forty minutes at a time with very repetitive tasks or a large number of tasks, the only thing that can keep my focus is muttering swears under my breath or, as is often the case, venting my frustrations at the virtual avatars around me to once more stop my brain from turning off.

    These mid-test vents eventually became a source of comedy when it came to watching back my test footage, as my creative application of language would often get caught by the Slack auto-transcriber, leading to questions about the suitability of the content if it featured such harsh language… before they realise that, no, the experience itself did not have swearing, the idiot behind the headset was the source of all that.

    A lot of people consider swearing a dirty habit to have, especially in a professional context, but to me swearing comes part and parcel with the stresses that any job can bring, be it retail or corporate. The important distinction is knowing when it is the appropriate time to use curse words and when they should not be said under any circumstance. To reiterate a piece of advice I was once given and have brought up in a previous review:

    “Professionalism is delivering your points clearly and not saying fuck.”

    The line has often blurred for me given the fact I have been working remotely for so long, which I do worry has negatively impacted my socialisation skills for the day I might have to return to being in an office full time, but for now I enjoy the benefits of being a remote worker whose line of work allows her to curse to her heart’s content – which is a lot.

    I did not plan at all to launch into an unscripted diatribe about the origins of my swearing habit along with defending the character of those who do swear in professional scenarios, but that is the beauty of the Redundancy Review. We have random topics at all times and sometimes they take on a life of their own.

    It probably does not help my current situation that I am quite attentively playing through Nier Replicant “Ver 1.22474487139…”, speech marks added so as not to confuse the ellipsis that is actually part of the title with my habit of adding ellipses when a thought needs dramatic impact.

    Through playing Replicant, I have once more come face to face with one of my favourite characters in gaming, a lovely, wholesome individual that goes by the name of Kainé…

    …who has some of my favourite profane dialogue in all of gaming.

    She is a character you encounter fairly early on in the course of the story, who eventually joins with your party after defeating a boss she wanted revenge on. Her NPC AI matches similar to what the player character is intended to be, a spellsword brawler who can dish out a good amount of physical damage whilst also using magic spells to support longer combos or enable quick executions.

    True to form with any Yoko Taro game though, she has hidden depths that come to light as part of the multiple playthroughs required to fully understand the story, with her even getting an extended story in “Ver 1.22…” after completing the entirety of the original game. 

    Fun fact, this game is the sole reason that “hussy” features so prominently in my lexicon, due to the acidic banter that exists between Kainé and Grimoire Weiss, your floating magical book that is the source of all your spells.

    This does remind me I should take more screenshots of the game after I make it through my first playthrough so I can have some material ready to use when I eventually want to talk about this game after 100%ing it, but at least I can use this review to post another one of my favourite lines from Kainé.

    There is one more line that I consider my absolute favourite, but I will wait until the proper review to share that one.

    I think that covers it for today, thank you for reading this surprise discussion of swearing in real life and swearing in video games style Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope the Monday blues of the first working day back of the year have not brought you down too much, and if they have, try turning the air blue with a bunch of swearing, that always makes me feel better.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 171, “Libraries Are Great”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

    Good morning librarians and archivists, welcome to Day 171 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Yeah, I know, a single day entry – what a concept. A daily series writing an entry on the day it should go up.

    Okay I am being snarky and facetious, but given the fact I had another thing not go my way yesterday you can forgive me for being a little cynical.

    Specifically, I was unable to book the co-working space for a second day in a row, which meant needing to find another place to park my posterior to attempt to be productive. I briefly considered taking a visit back to my parent’s place, especially given they have full Fibre To The Premises meaning an absolutely gorgeous three-hundred megabits down speed with around a hundred megabits in up speed… but given my dad has also started taking all my old Warhammer bits out of the loft, I would certainly get distracted with that instead of working.

    There was also the option of becoming one of those insufferable people who squat in local cafes to do their work, although I would aim to be a bit more polite than them and actually order proper drinks regularly to my table rather than doing the bare minimum, but then I run into the problem of looking like an absolute weirdo wearing virtual reality kit in a public space, which might mean I get kicked out of wherever I have parked myself.

    My options were not looking favourable, until I started my walk home from the “office” and realised the perfect solution had been right on my doorstep the entire time.

    Shrewsbury Library, an absolutely gorgeous building, and my refuge for today to get myself connected with the hope of getting some work done. Whilst this location carries the same amount of risk that a cafe does in terms of wearing VR kit and looking weird, the table I have perched myself on is in a corner away from the main public areas. This means that I might still get a few weird looks thrown my way, but so long as I keep my voice down during any test runs I should be able to stay productive.

    The major upside to working from the library is that it is a way cheaper alternative compared to booking a co-working space or regular ordering drinks in a cafe, the only expectation is being respectful to my surroundings.

    In general though, I have always loved libraries as the free public spaces that they are, and without the local library back in my home town I do not think I would have been exposed to all of the hobbies I currently enjoy.

    If you cannot tell from the general contents of the website, I am a massive nerd, and a huge part of my formative years were spent in a library. There was a Warhammer tabletop group hosted every Saturday at my local library where I was introduced by an old friend of mine, eventually becoming a regular member at the group.

    It is interesting playing an involved tabletop game in a library, especially as whilst we were allowed to make a modicum of noise, there were moments where we did get told to reign it in a little bit as, after all, it was still a public library. Eventually though as the years shifted on at the club we were moved from a central area of the library to the space at the rear, pushing us out of sight of normal patrons and giving us a bit more freedom to express ourselves.

    This group was actually where I got into the deckbuilding card game “Star Realms” as well. I noticed it in my old friend’s bag one day and got curious, asking what it was. We played a round and I ended up enjoying it so much that I picked up my own copy to introduce to my friends at some of my other gaming groups at the time. This then evolved into me becoming an avid Star Realms collector, and to this day I still place it as my favourite card game of all time – even over Magic: the Gathering.

    Though it was not just the Saturday group that I used the library for. During my summer breaks at university there was usually very little for me to do during the week… granted I should have been studying and actually improving myself on being a game developer but there was also a lot of mental shit going on during that time which held me back. 

    Anyway, back on topic, I would often meet up with a good friend of mine to grab a quiet table somewhere in the library and play card games for a bit, getting both much needed time out of the house and socialisation.

    That is the beauty of public libraries, they go beyond what most people assume as simply being a place to take out books or use the computer, although the latter is definitely a vital service in the current age. Libraries are spaces for anyone to use for whatever purpose, they can act as social hubs, medical centres, or even just a warm place for people to come during the day. 

    They are essential public services, ones that should be funded to the highest degree because of what they can be for people in need. I would not be in the position I am in life without public libraries, and future generations should benefit from the same perks I received from having a good public library in their life.

    Think that covers everything for today, and gets in a somewhat usual dose of left-leaning politics into the mix. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to take a relaxing weekend and recover from whatever has brought you low – treat yourself, you deserve it.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 159, “It Still Feels Weird To Rest”

    for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

    Good morning daydreamers and fantasists, welcome to Day 159 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    It is a wonderfully brisk autumn Sunday, and events have moved at a very slow pace today. Woke up later than usual, saw my partner off to work, laid in a little bit longer before heading to the kitchen to mess around with food plans for the rest of the week, hung out with a very close friend of mine, and then once my partner came home from work, we threw our heads against the wall at the last major challenge we have to face in Expedition 33.

    By all accounts, today was good and restful… so, why am I sitting here feeling guilty about how today has gone?

    I have talked at length about how weird it feels for me to rest sometimes, that I am somehow undeserving of taking time for myself, especially when those moments often come after prolonged periods of stressful circumstances where any person would consider it a reasonable reaction to want to rest.

    It is definitely part of my mindset that I need to change the most, that not every waking hour needs to have a defined end product and I am okay to do things solely for myself than in service of other goals…

    …of course this is very much easier said than done when you consider I am running a blog where I try to review something in my life that I have experienced recently and I have weaved myself into a trap where my every waking moment can become “content” for me to write about if so desired along with the fact that I will be paranoid if I cannot write about anything interesting on a given day and the desire to tell a story from my past is not present.

    That did not start out with me meaning to get extremely real with my perspective on things.

    The structure I have given myself does not do much to help things. Something I have reflected on over the course of writing this series, and finding myself planning ahead for when I find myself in a permanent role once more, is that having the structure based on days makes things more difficult for myself when I inevitably fall behind due to life circumstances, leading to filler posts or massive anthology posts.

    When I can eventually transition the Redundancy Review into the “Rosa Review” (maintaining alliteration at all times of course), I will instead be calling each post an episode instead, lessening the pressure on myself if I wanted to step away for a day or two to focus solely on taking time to rest and providing a more broad scope of what to talk about.

    Posts would still be created, just at a lesser frequency. I would hate to give up on what I have created here, and letting my skills atrophy again would be a damn shame considering how much I feel I have improved over the course of writing these posts.

    Even if my mind is still not fully where I want it to be right now, I still want to do my best to tell this ongoing story.

    For those who come after.

    I am… so excited to talk about Expedition 33 once I finally 100% it, there is so much I love about that game that I want to write about at length but I still have not actually hit the ending yet, want to beat the superboss before I do that.

    Though, it does sort of leave me without a “formal” review topic today, but I have got some cool pictures from the walk I took with my friend.

    The place where I live has had a lot of rain lately, and living right on the banks of a river leaves the local area prone to flooding. This resulted in the very amusing shot of the public life preserver being decently submerged by the rising water, but the picture of the coffee shop on stilts is the more impactful one.

    It is a place called “Coffee Evolution”, and it is actually where my partner & I had one of our first dates together as a formal couple. Staff have moved since that point leading the quality of the coffee to sadly decline, but I still appreciate the memories I have of the place.

    Plus, this is the first time I have been able to see it on its stilts up close and personal, considering when this area floods it usually blocks access off entirely. It is only because the flooding was not as severe as usual that I was able to take these shots properly.

    That will cover everything for today. Thank you very much for reading this edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to relax and not have the impending Monday blues bring you down too much.

  • Redundancy ‘Review’: Day 148-151, “Finally Slowing Down”

    Redundancy ‘Review’: Day 148-151, “Finally Slowing Down”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

    Good morning tortoises and hares, welcome to one big ass catch up post for Day 148 to 151 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Work has been utter chaos this week, preparing for a big launch requiring all hands on deck for all manner of tasks, which had the net result of me ultimately having very little time for writing between managing period symptoms, managing sinus infection symptoms, and engaging in what small self-care activities my remaining time & energy would allow.

    Not entirely out of the woods yet either with work, but at the very least I have the weekend now to enact some basic recovery plan and actually engage with my hobbies once more: gaming, cooking, and of course, writing.

    Admittedly it has been a while since I have had something like this at work. My entire career has been marked by various points where a massive effort was needed to get something out the door on a Friday, usually leaving me exhausted by the time everything wrapped up and just wanting nothing more than to sleep for fourteen hours.

    The fact that I am awake, aware, and engaging in something mentally stimulating after nine hours of sleep shows that I have built a resilience to this kind of thing… when you ignore the fact that my dual-afflictions this week meant I had to take Wednesday morning off because I felt like I was going to die if I put on a VR headset and every day outside of that it was a challenge to drag myself to my desk each day…

    …but I kept going, even in the face of adversity, and that is what I am going to be proud of. Through anxiety, pain, and exhaustion, I always choose to keep moving so I am able to see the better days on the horizon.

    Trying to write things down after a period of not writing for a bit always feels difficult, as if somehow I need to shake the rust and cobwebs out of my system even though I have been practicing for several months now, although my usual stumbling block is finding areas to elaborate on in a positive way rather than harping on the negative aspects of what I have been experiencing.

    I believe it is important to let yourself experience negative feelings, but not to let them consume you – a balancing act that is most definitely easier said than done. Suppressing negative feelings can result in them escaping out at the worst of times, lashing out at those around you when everything becomes too hard to bear, a painful experience I know all too well. But constantly dwelling on whatever is bringing negativity to your life ultimately lowers your resting mood which can make it harder to appreciate what few positive moments come your way.

    For all my struggles, there is still a lot I have going for me in this life, and I want to try focus on that more than what is not exactly going my way right now.

    Think that will cover everything for today, a bit of a shorter post but given my exhaustion and minor addiction to Clair Obscur right now, it does the job of hopefully starting a new streak.

    Need a thumbnail though, so I will use some pictures of the burgers I made tonight. My first proper bit of cooking this entire week.

    Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are I hope you are able to have a relaxing weekend and that you are able to recover from whatever might have happened during your week.